erlend

erlend, 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago) to random

https://blog.erlend.sh/weird-netizens

To free ourselves from feudal identity fiefdoms, we must simultaneously de-centralize and re-centralize identity.

Decentralize ownership.
Recentralize agency.

By de-centralizing the ownership of identity away from platform monopolies and back to individuals, we can re-centralize the agency of personhood.

The central authority of ones digital identity must be the individual. That's how we regain our digital sovereignty.

#NomadicIdentity #IndieWeb

anildash, 1 month ago to random

Who are the early-career people in tech that inspire you or give you hope with their work or their ideas?

404mediaco, 1 month ago to random

It's time to pay for search?

https://www.404media.co/friendship-ended-with-google-now-kagi-is-my-best-friend/

erlend, 1 month ago to Matrix

https://blog.commune.sh/federated-webrings/

In the glory days of web 1.0, social websites would prominently link out to their digital neighbors via lists known as webrings; magical doorways to an expansive hinterland of digital villages.

Let's envision what a truly federated chat like #Matrix could do to improve the cross-connectivity of chat channels. Most of these features are already possible, they just haven't been implemented yet in a community-oriented client experience.

#CommuneApp #fediverse #community

raffomania, 1 month ago to fediverse

Here's my pitch for a federated bookmark manager and why it can make the indie web stronger.

https://www.rafa.ee/articles/introducing-linkblocks-federated-bookmark-manager/

#fediverse #SmallWeb #indieweb #bookmarkshare

lutindiscret, 1 month ago to random

@erlend I've spent 2 hours of this rainy day to read your blog and #CommuneApp design discussions. I will definitely keep an eye on it and hope you'll deliver something in 2024.

What do you think about https://webxdc.org?

0x0, 1 month ago to random

i can second the sentiment of not making tech nerds write grant applications.

hell, i cant even write a proper well understandable description of what my projects do. im an engineer, not a marketing person.

i feel like this is a shared problem with a lot of people. they can make technologically impressive things but as soon as it comes to marketing it, it falls short.

erlend, 1 month ago to fediverse

I nominate @kissane & @molly0xfff & @Mer__edith for Internet President triumvirate.

#fediverse #IndieWeb #socialmedia #internet

ben.werdmuller, 1 month ago to random

"A social network based on the Mastodon codebase is now worth $11bn dollars" is not a great take because it misses a bunch of grifty, hateful context, but it's certainly an interesting chapter in open source social networking. (I also had someone build a Nazi-friendly network on one of my codebases, and I think about how I might prevent that from happening again a lot.)

erlend, 1 month ago to threads

https://blog.erlend.sh/what-meta-corp-can-give-the-fediverse-money

I suspect the fedi-collective has more negotiating power in this moment than it realizes. We may as well make some asks, see how Meta responds, and they in turn will see how the public, the media and the regulators respond to them in this bold new era of pervasive Big Tech skepticism.

Money can mitigate the risk of #Threads :

'coopting the fediverse': $200k for Test Suite.
'overburdening moderators': $200k for moderation.
'locking in users': $200k for #NomadicIdentity

hongminhee, 2 months ago to fediverse

#Fedify finally has a step-by-step tutorial! It's perfectly fine if you're not familiar with the #ActivityPub protocol or the #Deno runtime. Here's the link for beta readers:

https://unstable.fedify.dev/tutorial/

arcanicanis, 2 months ago to random

I guess I successfully created a did:plc and have it published to (sorta) Bluesky's backend did:plc registry: https://plc.directory/did:plc:s2m7kbq2unki7rager5aw6sw/log

Instead of endorsing any sort of a ATProto PDS or anything, I instead have it pointing to my ActivityPub (and other) identifiers in varying forms.

I'm probably the only [non-employee] user (or at least: one of very few) on Bluesky's infrastructure that has full custody and control over their own private keys for their did:plc identity, and yet I don't even have a Bluesky account. Unless I'm just uninformed of something buried somewhere allowing you to export at least one of your rotationKeys (not the signingKey, which is just for signing posts, etc). Because without that, you don't really control your identity at all, only Bluesky exclusively does.

Meanwhile, in this endeavor, I "only" had to:

• Write a DAG-CBOR and CIDv1 encoder
• Write a Multibase and Multikey encoder and decoder
• Write a base58btc encoder/decoder
• Write a base32 encoder
• Write functions to compress and decompress a secp256k1 public key (involves crypto maths, for decompression)
• Write some very adhoc ASN.1 DER encoding/decoding functions (just to encode a raw secp256k1 public key into PEM encoding, to feed to OpenSSL; and then extract the r and s values from the outputted signature from OpenSSL)
• Write a function to generate a did:plc identifier, from the genesis operation
• Write a lot of test code

With how scarcely some topics are documented, and how scattered many tidbits of info is: I swear some of this is almost intentionally a trap to sell consultancy.

erlend, 2 months ago to Matrix

https://blog.commune.sh/beyond-discord/

Like any other major network incumbent, Discord cannot simply be side-stepped altogether; appropriate off-ramps are required.

#Matrix bridging enables an incremental, non-disruptive transition from the old to the new.

We invite anyone interested in the development of #CommuneApp to join our newly opened space: https://matrix.to/#/#home:commune.sh

The first half of our product rollout starts next month, as we begin publicly testing our uniquely community-oriented Matrix client.

kissane, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to random

it’s wild and slightly alarming to me how much thinking and criticism from the late 70s and early 80s is extremely alive and on point today

like, the heated debates in late 70s (and even late 60s/early 70s) architectural/planning circles are THE SAME DEBATES we’re having now about new networks

julian, 2 months ago to random

NodeBB is at this year's FediForum, and one of the breakout sessions centred around the Theadiverse, the subset of ActivityPub-enabled applications built around a topic-centric model of content representation.

Some of the topic touched upon included:

• Aligning on a standard representation for collections of Notes
• FEP-1b12 — Group federation and implementation thereof by Lemmy, et al.
• Offering a comparatively more feature-rich experience vis-a-vis restrictions re: microblogging
• Going forward: collaborating on building compatible threadiverse implementations

The main action item involved the genesis of an informal working group for the threadiverse, in order to align our disparate implementations toward a common path.

We intend to meet monthly at first, with the first meeting likely sometime early-to-mid April.

The topic of the first WG call is: Representation of the higher level collection of Notes (posts, etc.) — Article vs. Page, etc?

Interested?

• Publicly reply to this post (NodeBB does not support non-public posts at this time) if you'd like to join the list
• If you prefer to remain private, please email julian@nodebb.org

---

As an aside, I'd love to try something new and attempt to keep as much of this as I can on the social web. Can you do me a favour and boost this to your followers?

silverpill, 2 months ago to random

Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) can be divided into 3 categories, depending on where the authority resides:

• Secret key (did:key, did:pkh).
• Server (did:web).
• Blockchain (hundreds of them).

With a #DID derived from a secret key you can truly own your identity. Unfortunately, key rotation is not supported, and if you lose your key, you lose everything. This can be partially mitigated with distributed key generation techniques that make key recovery possible if only M of N shards are available, but they are complicated.

Servers can rotate keys, but they can also suddenly disappear, and again you lose everything.

Blockchain-based systems support key rotation and don't have a single point of failure (if done right). Sometimes they are called "servers with superpowers". However, popular ones are not suitable for the job because writing to them is very expensive and their clients need powerful computing devices and a lot of storage.

Is there a way around that? Yes. Blockchains can be very lightweight and they don't actually need a cryptocurrency, miners or stakers in order to work. There is a simple consensus algorithm known as Proof of authority, and one of the Fediverse competitors, Bluesky, seems to be planning to build such system:

https://github.com/did-method-plc/did-method-plc

>We are actively hoping to replace it with or evolve it into something less centralized - likely a permissioned DID consortium.

They are afraid to say the B-word, but "permissioned consortium" is exactly what it is. Of course, their identity #blockchain doesn't have to be the only one in existence. I think in the future we might see quite a lot of "identity cooperatives" of different shapes and sizes. Perhaps even a universal client, curl for identity, can be developed.

hongminhee, 2 months ago to random

Just set up a user group for #Fedify on Matrix!

https://matrix.to/#/#fedify:matrix.org

smallcircles, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to fediverse

#Fediverse attn..

Give @julian #Github comment some good reactions to show the folks of the #W3C Federated Identity CG that there's more than #BigTech #identity providers to take into account..

https://github.com/fedidcg/FedCM/issues/240#issuecomment-1968574265

🚀 Boosts appreciated.